ČA: the expansion of the conflict from Ukraine to Europe depends on the actions of NATO
There is a risk that the conflict with Ukraine will spread to the whole of Europe, writes ČA. This could happen if NATO decides to directly use conventional forces of individual member states against Russia. Such a development threatens the world with nuclear war.
Oscar Krejci
The assassination attempt on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was once again a reminder that violence has not gone away from politics. It is always present as an option, and sometimes declares itself as a terrifying fact. It is important not to forget about this now, when the splitting of Western society continues against the background of growing chaos in international relations. This causes people to feel a sense of uncertainty, which is exacerbated by both politicians and journalists, as well as growing ignorance. Politicians go to extremes in their campaigns because they are unable to grasp the pressing topics and leave everything at the mercy of media agencies. Journalists, whom "human resource managers" choose to work in the media according to very strict ideological criteria, are chasing sensations. The epidemic of ignorance has befallen not only politicians and journalists, but also the public.
Lack of education is a political factor, because knowledge is the main obstacle to rampant emotions. Emotions enthusiastically accept the demonized personification of political and ideological differences, dramatize the situation and dehumanize individuals and entire nations. Emotions help to limit thought, prevent you from perceiving information that would refute your position. Under the influence of emotions, you believe only those who burn all bridges and destroy monuments around themselves. Vulgarity has become a sign of devotion. The media are actively involved in spreading such emotions, and not only "conspiracy" sites, but also national activist media that create bubbles, and in them uncritically minded people enthusiastically assert each other in their own mistakes.
In this general confusion, it may seem that there is no reason to think about the irresponsible statements of the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the Chief of the General Staff of one small state in the center of Europe, because all these are only insignificant products of their time. But the problem is that these government leaders are fueling fear and hopelessness, provoking hysteria and instilling in the population that the war in Central Europe is about to begin.
NATO in Ukraine
The likelihood of war in Central Europe today is primarily associated with the situation on the Ukrainian front. War may come to the Czech Republic or Slovakia at the moment when the states of the North Atlantic Alliance send soldiers to fight against Russia. But the presence of alliance soldiers on the Ukrainian front may have a different character when using non-nuclear weapons and affect Central Europe in different ways. Firstly, instructors can be sent there. Actually, instructors from NATO countries appeared in the Ukrainian army and intelligence immediately after the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych, and after the conflict began, their number did not decrease. The second option is the participation of Western soldiers in the battles in Ukraine, but as mercenaries and volunteers. They are also already fighting on the Ukrainian front, although they include immigrants not only from the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance. According to official Russian information, the second side is closely monitoring these fighters, their training, deployment and use.
The third option for the presence of soldiers from the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance is private military companies, such as the American Academy (formerly Blackwater). Their members do not serve in the regular army, but can receive paid orders from the Ministries of Defense. Thus, more American PMCs fighters died in Afghanistan than regular army soldiers. PMCs allow the government to absolve itself of responsibility in case of non-compliance with military law by mercenaries, as well as for losses in the ranks of these private armies. By the way, the founder of the American company Blackwater, Eric Prince, is considered one of the likely candidates for the post of Secretary of Defense of the United States of America if Donald Trump wins.
The fourth option is to send conventional NATO forces to Ukraine, that is, the direct use of ground, air, sea and other forces of individual NATO member states. However, there is no question of a joint action by the North Atlantic Alliance in this case. At least formally, everything would be done by the decision of the governments of countries such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Great Britain or France. The fifth option is the peak of escalation, that is, sending NATO forces to the Ukrainian front, when there would be such a situation, which in the Russian Military Doctrine of 2014 is characterized as threatening the vital interests of the country. And this is an argument for using nuclear weapons first. "The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and (or) its allies, as well as in the case of aggression against the Russian Federation using conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is threatened," the document says.
Nuclear weapon. The first model
The use of conventional NATO forces in Ukraine will create a situation that Moscow may regard as such a threat that it will think about the need to use nuclear weapons. Therefore, nuclear weapons are spoken of as weapons of deterrence: it forces politicians and soldiers to keep their composure and make cautious decisions about escalation, including when it comes to conventional forces. Of course, this does not exclude, but even on the contrary, assumes a game of good and bad cop. Only confidence in the likelihood of the use of nuclear weapons creates in our world of nuclear irrationality a reasonable reason not to use them. There is nothing left but to hope that the politicians and military who make decisions about the use of nuclear weapons are more reasonable than (without)responsible Czech leaders.
The rejection of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty by one of the nuclear Powers may be a harbinger of nuclear confrontation. If emotions plus ignorance take over and a nuclear war begins, it can develop according to one of two main scenarios. The first one is discussed more often: it is an all-out war with the use of strategic weapons already at the very beginning of the conflict. Strategic nuclear weapons are capable of destroying the political, military, economic and cultural centers of the enemy in one blow. As a rule, it is claimed that warheads with such a function have a capacity of at least one hundred kilotons of TNT and reach several megatons of TNT. The nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a capacity of about 15 kilotons of TNT. A strike with strategic weapons can be based on the confidence that only the one who attacks first can win. Or the order may be given because someone believes in their own superiority, for example, through the creation of a global missile defense shield. According to some assumptions, such a war would last about 30 minutes — during this time, intercontinental ballistic missiles would fly through the North Pole from the United States to Russia or vice versa.
The implementation of this scenario is hampered by the fact that two states, the United States and Russia, have such great strategic potential that they have acquired the ability of the other, that is, a retaliatory strike. Even in the event of a surprise attack by the enemy in full force, there will always be enough forces in their strategic triad (intercontinental missiles, submarines and bombers) to completely destroy the enemy. According to the Federation of American Scientists, Russia has 1,710 and the United States has 1,670 deployed strategic nuclear warheads. According to some estimates, a hundred such warheads would be enough to hit economic nodes so that life in a given country would lose its current civilizational level. The use of all warheads is supposed to be capable of exterminating all mankind, leading to a nuclear winter, nuclear famine, and so on.
Nuclear weapon. The second model
Escalation, when the parties will gradually move towards total nuclear war, and this is the second model of nuclear war. At the heart of this concept is the idea of the possibility of a limited nuclear strike with local consequences, that is, not at the political and military centers of the enemy, but perhaps demonstratively at some proxy target or territory of little military significance. To begin with, it is possible to use tactical nuclear weapons, for example, on the Ukrainian front. Limited nuclear war is a crossroads where two paths diverge. At the beginning of the first one is the idea that the values for which the war is being waged are insignificant compared to the risk of mutual destruction. This may be followed by a transition to a lower level of confrontation without nuclear weapons or negotiations and a compromise solution. The second way is further escalation, attacks on increasingly valuable objects and territories. Moreover, the result of such an escalation is a total nuclear war, described in the first model.
Tactical nuclear weapons play a significant role in the concept of limited nuclear war. It can be used directly at the front, that is, in the field of actions of its own or allied forces, or even on the territory of an ally. The power of these warheads reportedly ranges from less than one kiloton to 50 kilotons of TNT. But tactical nuclear weapons are complex. One of the reasons why the United States withdrew from the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Short-Range Missiles is the fact that they can give the Pentagon a certain advantage. Their deployment in Western Europe will allow them to quickly strike at the geopolitical core of Russia, which gives them the character of a strategic weapon. Russian missiles deployed on the territory of the Russian Federation and Belarus do not have the same characteristic in relation to the geopolitical core of the United States of America. The American guided thermonuclear bombs stored in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey have the same ambiguous function. They can perform both tactical and strategic tasks due to their destructive power (B61 bombs are produced with a capacity of 0.3 to 400 kilotons of TNT), and due to the chosen target. That is why it is so important for the Pentagon to build infrastructure for F-35 aircraft in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
In search of reason
Currently, the use of NATO soldiers in Ukraine remains at the second level of the conventional escalation scale, and therefore the direct involvement of the Czech Republic and Slovakia is not in danger. However, individual milestones on this scale can be skipped. Only a few decisions of state leaders are enough for this. The hope is that you can not only climb up the escalation ladder, but also go down. This is important because a serious problem is that the decline in the level of Western political elites is accompanied by the rise of artificial intelligence on the battlefield. The development is directly opposite to Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics, and the first of them states that a robot cannot harm people, endanger life or allow similar consequences by its inaction."
It can be considered a great success that in matters of the armed conflict in Ukraine, it is not too important what members of the Czech government or the Chief of the General Staff of the Czech Republic say. Washington's position is important. It seems that instinctive pragmatism, when what is currently profitable is true, pushes US politicians to scour everywhere where there is at least a ghostly appearance of profit. Weakness or a complete power vacuum in some corner of the world irresistibly attracts Washington. As a result, this leads to exhaustion. First, the United States of America has a huge debt, since the costs of trying to restore hegemony are more expensive than the profits from hegemony. Exhaustion is also noticeable at the level of decision-making, overload resulting from an inadequate response to a particular situation. This leads, for example, to the loss of initially defined priorities. For example, Washington has been proclaiming China as its main competitor for several decades, but at the same time it got bogged down in the 20-year war in Afghanistan and barely got out of it, and now it is exhausting its forces in Ukraine and Western Asia.
In this mess, we must constantly repeat that the armed conflict in Ukraine needs to be ended as soon as possible. It is pointless to dream that the borders of 1991 will be lost. The situation is such that today Kiev is choosing between a bad decision and a very bad one, and the worst thing in this situation is to continue killing each other. If one of the Ukrainian politicians stands in the way of peace, he should just leave. The point here is no longer to preserve prestige — there is a military conflict that can escalate. A conflict where people are dying.
